


the secrets you tell me (i'll take to my grave)

by Flowerparrish



Series: Clint Barton Bingo [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bingo Fill, HP AU, M/M, Misunderstandings, Not Beta Read, Prompt Fill, Teenage Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 18:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19773559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish
Summary: He recognizes one of Steve’s Gryffindor friends, Clint—the cute one, Bucky would think, if he still thought things like that. These days, he’s shut out pretty much everyone except Steve (and okay, if he’s honest, sometimes he even avoids Steve), so Clint is just one of Steve’s friends.Which doesn’t really explain why Clint is laying on his stomach in the grass, outer robes discarded, wearing frayed jeans and a t-shirt, lazily paging through what looks like a muggle book.





	the secrets you tell me (i'll take to my grave)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hawksonfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawksonfire/gifts).



> For candycanedarcy, aka the first person to cheer on this fic! I love you bro <3 (Additional thanks go to the BDBD sprint squad for cheering)
> 
> For Clint Barton Bingo Square B1: First Kiss. 
> 
> This was initially for a Mandatory Fun Day prompt, like, weeks ago, but then life happened, but then it was also half written, so it got repurposed as a bingo fic. One of these days I'll complete an MFD prompt in the timeframe. That day was not this day. 
> 
> Title from Guillotine by Jon Bellion.

Bucky tenses when someone drops down on the grass next to him, but he doesn’t want to glance away from the arithmancy problem he’s _almost_ got figured out.

He almost forgets that there’s someone there, once he gets back into the flow of the equations, and when he glances up half an hour later, he’s almost surprised to see an actual person next to him.

He recognizes one of Steve’s Gryffindor friends, Clint—the cute one, Bucky would think, if he still thought things like that. These days, he’s shut out pretty much everyone except Steve (and okay, if he’s honest, sometimes he even avoids Steve), so Clint is just one of Steve’s friends.

Which doesn’t really explain why Clint is laying on his stomach in the grass, outer robes discarded, wearing frayed jeans and a t-shirt, lazily paging through what looks like a muggle book.

“Hi,” Bucky says a bit pointedly, not quite making it a question.

Clint glances up at him. “Hey.” He grins and something tightens in Bucky’s gut, but Bucky ignores the feeling.

“What are you doing?”

Clint gestures at the book. “Reading.”

Bucky wants to say, _yeah, no shit._ He wants to ask, _okay, but why are you reading here, next to me?_ Instead, he just nods once and lets it go, because saying anything else would be prolonging the conversation—and Bucky doesn’t do that these days.

They stay out until it’s time to head in for dinner, and when Bucky packs up his homework, Clint stands by and waits for him. Bucky wants to tell him to just go, but he’s not _rude,_ so he just doesn’t say anything at all.

Clint seems content with the silence, but he does break it when they reach the Great Hall. “Do you want to come sit with us?” he asks, gesturing at the Gryffindor table where Steve is, along with a couple of his other Gryffindor friends. Bucky also spots Natasha, from Slytherin, and Stark and Banner from Ravenclaw—in the upper years, everyone tends to just sit with their friends, and the school excuses it away as promoting inner house unity (no one wants another Great War, after all).

“No, thank you,” Bucky says.

“Okay,” Clint agrees easily. “See you around.”

Bucky can’t help glancing over at Steve and his friends from where he’s found himself an empty patch of seats in the long Hufflepuff table, his own house well accustomed to giving him space. It almost seems like it _might_ be nice to be there, for a moment.

But only a moment.

\--

It becomes a routine. On nice days, Bucky will sit outside under a tree for shade, and more often than not, Clint will join him.

Clint is a quiet presence, rarely trying to start a conversation, and Bucky finds he doesn’t mind the companionship so long as it doesn’t come with expectations.

Clint brings all sorts of different books, both muggle and magical, fiction and nonfiction, and pages slowly but steadily through them.

“What are you reading?” Bucky finally caves and asks one day. It looks like another muggle book, but that’s about as much as Bucky can tell.

“Oh, it’s just a muggle book,” Clint says, shrugging. His smile is a little bit tight, less bright than usual. Bucky should just let it drop—clearly Clint doesn’t want to talk about it—but now that he’s allowed himself to be curious, he really wants to know.

“What’s it about?”

Clint shrugs again. “It’s a love story.”

Bucky almost rolls his eyes, because, c’mon, Clint could totally tell him more than _that,_ but he doesn’t want the gesture to be misunderstood. Instead, he nods and lets it go. “Cool.”

A few minutes later, Clint glances over. “What are you working on?”

“Arithmancy project,” Bucky says. “The equations should work, but I can’t quite seem to get them right? I dunno.”

“Let me see?” Clint asks.

Clint is not, so far as Bucky knows, in arithmancy, so why he would want to look at a bunch of numbers and letters and magical symbols is beyond Bucky. But he’s beyond desperate at this point, so he pushes over his parchment and allows Clint to study it.

“Hm,” Clint hums, tracing over the problem with long fingers. After a couple of minutes, he taps a part on the left-hand side of the parchment. “Here’s your problem.”

Bucky snatches it back and tracks over the problem quickly, realizing, to his growing surprise, that Clint is right. “Merlin’s balls,” he whispers, quickly scratching it out and making corrections. There’s no use, he’ll have to transfer it over onto a new parchment—but that’s fine, because this time, it’ll _work._ “How did you do that?”

Clint shrugs. “I’ve got good eyes.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works.”

“I just found the problem, didn’t I? Clearly it is.”

Bucky’s almost unconvinced, but he can admit Clint has a point. “Why aren’t you in arithmancy, then?”

Clint grins, a little mischievous. “And do all that math? No thank you.”

It’s Bucky’s turn to hum noncommittally; it _is_ rather a lot of math, but Clint’s also clearly got a knack for it. It seems a shame to waste it, but then, that’s Clint’s choice.

“Are you going to the match this weekend?” Clint asks, pulling Bucky out of his musings. While Bucky’s been lost in thought, Clint has flopped over from his stomach so that now he’s laying stretched out on his back. “Gryffindor vs Ravenclaw,” he adds, as if Bucky might not know.

As if Steve talks about anything _but_ Quidditch. It’s the first match of the season, and Steve’s house is playing: he hasn’t shut up about it for _weeks._

“I dunno,” Bucky says with a shrug. “I have a paper I could start on, and the library will be nearly empty.”

Clint looks, for the first time, disappointed. “Oh, okay.”

Bucky remembers, belatedly, that Clint is on Gryffindor’s team—seeker, of course. “But, I mean, Steve will probably drag me along,” Bucky says, hoping to make Clint smile. (And no, he’s absolutely not thinking about the fact that he likes it when Clint smiles.)

It works. Clint lights up. “So you’ll be rooting for Gryffindor?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Like I ever have a choice. Steve tries to make me support Gryffindor over my own house.”

“The Hufflepuff team is kind of shit,” Clint points out.

“It’s _my house.”_

“I see you didn’t deny my point, though.”

They fall back into silence, Bucky looking out at the sun setting over the lake in a bid to not instead look at the colors of the sunset painted across Clint’s skin.

Bucky almost startles when a hand touches his wrist—but it’s just Clint. He doesn’t think about how it’s the first time, in all these weeks, that Clint has touched him. “Sit with us at dinner?”

Bucky opens his mouth to say no. But apparently he’s still a little rattled, because instead he says, “Yeah, okay.”

It’s almost worth it to see how bright Clint’s grin is, more blinding than the sun on the horizon.

\--

Dinner should be awkward. Bucky hasn’t spent much time with these people in over a year, and even back then, they were always more Steve’s friends than his. He had his own friends, of course, but they’d all gotten weird around him after—well, after everything.

Steve’s friends aren’t weird. Maybe they’ve had time to get used to the way Bucky’s changed, maybe not, but they don’t act any differently. In fact, they don’t even make a big deal about him showing up at their table—Ravenclaw, tonight—for dinner. They just welcome him into the fold, talk around him for the most part, but turn and include him at regular enough intervals that he can tell he’s not being ignored.

Steve isn’t even next to him; he was already wedged in between Natasha and Tony when Bucky and Clint showed up, and Bucky didn’t want to make anyone move. Instead, Clint took a seat across from Natasha, and Bucky sat on his other side.

He almost had a panic attack, toward the beginning, when Tony turned sharp eyes on him and opened his mouth to say something. But he was distracted by a question from Bruce, and Clint’s leg tangled around Bucky’s—another touch, another shock, but also… comforting?

Bucky excuses himself from dinner before dessert, claiming he has a paper to finish—it’s not a lie—but Clint grins at him warmly, so it must be okay.

He collapses in his bed in the Hufflepuff dorms, staring up at the canopy above him, and breathes.

\--

Bucky doesn’t sit with them the next couple of nights, but the day before the game, Clint has a pinched look to his face, a tension that’s carried in a grimace he tries to hide by smiling too often. Bucky thinks about Clint’s ankle hooked around his when he started to panic, and he sighs.

He walks over to their table alone—Clint had been busy with a last-minute practice, and had not been hanging around with Bucky out on the lawn under their tree—but Natasha makes a space between she and Clint as soon as he starts to head over.

Clint glances over at her when she moves, confusion evident on his face, but she just rolls her eyes and nods in Bucky’s direction.

Clint turns to look at him, and for the first time all day, the tension in his face eases and his smile looks real.

“Hey,” he greets when Bucky’s close enough to hear over the din of a hall full of teenagers chattering.

“Hey.”

Bucky takes the seat next to Clint; there’s just enough space that he has to be too close to either Clint or Natasha, so he ends up with his right arm pressed against Clint’s left. He’s shocked, the same way he always is, by the warmth of someone else’s body against his.

Clint rejoins his conversation with Steve—about Quidditch, of course—so Bucky rolls his eyes and turns to Natasha.

They talk about Defense, which is one of Bucky’s better subjects and is Natasha’s clear passion. She’s from one of those old Pureblood families, and she’s a Slytherin, but she’s clearly not been placed their for a purist attitude. Natasha seems to hate everything about pureblood prejudice and the dark arts each. Luckily, purist attitudes are on the decline, and there’s a fair number of ambitious halfbloods and muggleborns in Slytherin these days, so she’s not ostracized in her house.

Bucky suspects holidays are another matter, when she has to go home, because there’s no way her family are thrilled with her choice of friends. But he doesn’t know her well enough to try to confirm his suspicions, and it feels wrong to ask Steve or Clint.

So they chat about Defense, about the Patronus that most students in their year still can’t cast, probably won’t ever be able to cast, despite the fact that teachers at least try to teach them these days. Natasha’s got it, of course, but Slytherins and Hufflepuffs have different Defense classes, so Bucky doesn’t know what form hers takes.

He hasn’t managed it, yet. He thinks he could, maybe, if he could find the right memory—but he doesn’t want to see the form, so he doesn’t bother trying too hard.

At some point in the conversation, toward the end of dinner, Clint leans a little more heavily against Bucky’s arm. Bucky glances over and sees that his hand, under the table, is curled in a tight fist—so tight Bucky bets his nails are digging into his palm.

Bucky doesn’t think about what he does next; it’s instinct, mostly, and a desire to help that’s apparently been revived by Clint’s quiet friendship.

Bucky reaches out and gently takes Clint’s hand, wrapping his fingers around the fist. Clint’s hand relaxes in his surprise, and Bucky tangles their fingers together.

Clint glances over at Bucky, confused, mouth opening to say something, but Bucky just lightly squeezes and Clint closes his mouth.

He smiles a smile Bucky hasn’t seen yet, something soft and warm, before he turns back to Steve.

When Bucky looks back at Natasha, she’s staring into his soul. It’s unsettling, but it’s not the first time she’s ever done it. “What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she says after a moment. “Hey, you’re good at Charms. Explain specific versus general summoning in a way that makes sense.”

\--

The day of the game is cloudy, dark angry clouds that look like they’re going to let loose a torrent of rain at any moment.

That moment, unfortunately, is three minutes into the match.

Bucky wants to grumble at Steve for dragging him to the match; normally, he absolutely would, but Steve had barely even begun to ask Bucky if he’d come this time before he was saying yes. But he’d promised Clint he’d be there—well, not promised, but strongly implied. And, for once, Bucky really doesn’t want to disappoint someone other than Steve.

It’s a new feeling. He’s not sure he’s entirely comfortable with it.

But now, as sheets of rain pour down, the water pressure better than the shower in the boys’ dorms, Bucky _almost_ wishes he’d said no.

Or at least made an effort to say no, so that he could whine at Steve for dragging him here.

He isn’t even paying much attention to the game—which is good, because it’s gotten hard to see. He’d been watching Clint, and he’s still trying to, but mostly everyone’s become a blur of red and gold and blue and bronze, and Bucky mostly just hopes Clint catches the snitch soon.

As if he’s heard Bucky’s thoughts, one of the red and gold blurs suddenly pulls into a dive, speeding toward the ground. The longer he goes, though, the more Bucky thinks he’s just fucking with everyone; there’s literally no way anyone could see a snitch from that far away in this kind of rain.

But then a whistle blows, and the end of the match sounds, and the crowd _roars_ around him, and Bucky realizes—what the fuck. Clint’s done it.

\--

Bucky draws the line at waiting in the rain to see Clint. Instead, he goes to his dorms and takes a long, hot shower.

He does decide to sit with Steve and his friends at dinner. Clint is the last one to show up, but instead of taking the seat Natasha had been saving for him in the middle of all of their friends, he drops down into an empty seat next to Bucky at the edge of the group.

“Did you come to the match?” He’s bouncing a little in his seat like an excited puppy, and it tugs an unwilling smile up at the corners of Bucky’s lips.

“Yeah.”

Clint _beams._ “Did you see my catch?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “It was hard to see anything, but yes. How did you see the snitch in all that rain?”

Clint shrugs. “It wasn’t that hard.”

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky agrees, voice laden with sarcasm. “You’re probably the best seeker of our generation.”

Clint flushes and scratches at his nose. “Nah.”

Bucky wants to push the point, but he also knows what it’s like to be uncomfortable with praise, so instead he says, “Okay, so tell me about what I missed because I could barely see, then.”

Clint’s off like a shot, running his mouth about the game. It’s less that Bucky couldn’t see—although it is kind of that too—and more that he hadn’t been paying attention to anything but Clint. But it’s more fun hearing him talk about it anyway.

\--

The weather takes a turn for the miserable, and Bucky takes to spending his days in the library rather than outside. He pointedly doesn’t think about the fact that he’s never seen Clint set foot in the library willingly, in spite of the fact that he’s always reading, but he doesn’t expect him to appear at the small table where Bucky’s tucked into a back corner, hidden behind the stacks.

Clint drops down next to him, instead of across from him, his shoulder brushing against Bucky’s. Bucky swears he can feel the heat of Clint even though both of their robes, but that’s ridiculous.

“Are you going to Hogsmede next weekend?”

Bucky drops his quill, losing track of his thought halfway through the Arithmancy problem. “Uh, maybe?” He used to love Hogsmede weekends, but now… well, it’s just a lot of people. “Why?”

He glances over at Clint, who is a little bit flushed—is he sick?—and scratches his nose, ducks his head. “I was, uh…”

Bucky tilts his head in question, but doesn’t say anything.

Clint looks up from where he’s tracing patterns on the surface of the table, and he blurts, “Iwaswonderingifyouwantedtogowithme.”

Bucky blinks. He parses the words. And then he stands, abruptly, shoving his stuff in his bag. “I can’t—” he starts to say, and cuts himself off. “I can’t,” he repeats, and then he leaves, all but running away.

He doesn’t look back.

\--

Bucky doesn’t have to avoid Clint—or Steve, who tries to approach Bucky at breakfast, but fails when Bucky has to leave anyway—because he spends them in the hospital wing.

Some moons are rougher than others, tugging at his skin even when they haven’t reached the peak of their fullness, and he’s running a fever and feeling vaguely flu-like and miserable. He’s got his own room at the back of the hospital wing, where he goes to be ill every month and take his potion so that he’ll keep his mind when he transforms, and the house elves bring his meals to him.

He works on homework, and tells Madam Pomfrey he isn’t up to visitors, and passes three days ignoring the world.

On the fourth day, just as he’s getting ready to pack up and leave, halfway changed into his school robes instead of just his pajamas, the door opens a crack and someone slips in.

Not just anyone. Clint.

Bucky’s first impulse is to hide himself somehow—the bite mark on his shoulder is distinctive as fuck, and it’s normally not a problem, but then, he’s normally not half naked in front of anyone—but it’s too late.

Clint’s eyes rove over him, catching briefly on the bite mark, and Bucky closes his eyes.

“Hey.”

“Go away,” Bucky tries, instead of saying _please don’t tell anyone_ like he wants to. But—what good would that do? Who would keep this secret for him other than Steve?

He flinches when a hand cups his face, a snarl of threatened surprise working its way out of his throat—it’s too hard to control impulses like that, this close to the moon. He opens his eyes, and Clint’s right there. “I already knew.”

Bucky blinks. “You… what?”

“I’ve known for ages,” Clint tells him softly. His eyes are sad, but steady and honest. “I’ve had a crush on you forever. I used to watch you and think, man, he’ll never notice me, but I couldn’t stop watching you anyway. And then one year you came back, and you didn’t talk to everyone, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out something had happened. And you disappeared like clockwork, and I just… figured it out.”

“But…” Bucky doesn’t know what to ask—or rather, he has too many questions. “You never said.”

Clint shrugs, the movement slightly jostling his hand where it’s still on Bucky’s face. “It didn’t seem important.”

Bucky can feel his eyes trying to escape from his head, they’re so wide. “Clint, I’m a blood werewolf, what the hell?! Of course it’s important!”

“Okay, but, it’s also not? Because you’re you. You like math and you don’t make fun of my muggle books and you escort the younger years to the hospital wing when they get hurt, no matter what year they’re in. You come to my Quidditch games even though you don’t care about the sport, and you stay even when it’s pouring rain.” And then he says the words Bucky’s convinced himself he’ll never hear again. “I like you, Bucky.”

It’s too much. “But—”

“No.” Clint cuts him off ruthlessly, his eyes hard. “You can say you don’t like me back. That’s fine. But you can’t say you don’t deserve it. You’re _good,_ Bucky. You deserve it.”

“I don’t,” Bucky whispers, because he _doesn’t._ He knows not all dark creatures are evil, knows it isn’t his fault—but he also knows he’s broken, and he’ll never be the way he was before.

“I like you,” Clint repeats. “And unless you say no, I’m going to kiss you.”

Bucky doesn’t say no.

The kiss isn’t fireworks. Instead, it’s like being wrapped in a warming charm on a cold day.

Clint pulls back, and Bucky blinks his eyes open—when had they closed—to see Clint watching him carefully. “Do you want to go to Hogsmede with me?”

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes, figuring, well, what the hell. He’ll take what he can get. If Clint’s crazy enough to think he deserves _this,_ all of this, Bucky will have it for as long as he’s able. “Yeah, I’d love to.”

Clint’s answering smile is his biggest yet, and it makes Bucky’s heart skip a beat. “Good.”

They stare at each other stupidly for a moment, and Bucky almost leans in to steal another kiss before Clint glances around. “Shit, I should—I gotta go. I snuck in here because Steve broke his nose in a fight and Pomfrey was fixing it, but she’ll catch me if I don’t go soon.”

“Oh,” Bucky says, inexplicably put out. “Okay.”

Clint darts forward for one more kiss, a grin on his lips when he leans back on his heels again. “I’ll sit next to you in Transfiguration.”

He’ll have to abandon Natasha for that. That’s possibly the biggest indicator of his feelings right there—she’s fierce.

Bucky grins, small and hesitant. “Okay. See you then.”

Clint waves over his shoulder and slips out the door.

When Bucky finishes dressing and shoulders his bag to head out, he sees no sign of Clint, but Steve leaning against a veritable pile of pillows, his nose pink and recently healed. “Getting in fights without me?” Bucky asks, like he joins fights anymore. Like it wouldn’t be unfair, with his werewolf strength, to back Steve up in a physical fight.

Steve lights up anyway. “How’d it go?”

Bucky blushes. “Uh. Good.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Wow, way to paint a picture with words, Buck.”

Bucky flips him off and heads out the door, Steve’s laughter trailing behind him. Whatever, he can get his revenge by not taking notes for Steve when he inevitably misses class.

Class. Where Clint will be waiting for him.

Bucky grins, and for the first time in a long time, he has a feeling that today just might be a really, really good day.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed! <3 Leave a comment if you liked it and let me know what you thought!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] the secrets you tell me (i'll take to my grave)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21904756) by [only_more_love](https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_more_love/pseuds/only_more_love)




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